and every breath we drew was hallelujah
by irishais
Summary: Love is not a victory march. Seifer/Xu, for the prompt, "things you said that made me feel like shit."


(and every breath we drew was hallelujah)

 _-irishais-_

 **i.**

"Don't talk to me."

She is eighteen. He is sixteen. His sheets still _smell_ like her (laundry isn't done until Tuesdays in Garden, unless you've got something really bloody), and Seifer scoffs, rolls his eyes, grinds his jaw. She always did know how to piss him off, and he is _tired_ of giving into her, always two steps ahead, always one smart remark around the bend.

It's what got them into trouble in the first place. That, and a bottle of Dolletian rum, smuggled in from Xu's last free weekend.

Her hair is a glossy waterfall right down to her chin, and Seifer meets her glare, _determined_ not to be distracted by the cut, by the way it gleams and the memory of how it feels drifting through his fingers, how it feels pulled tight in his hand.

He drops her lacy grey bra onto the spotless tile between them, where everyone who cares can see.

The caf is crowded, chaotic with lunchtime. A pile of fabric should not cause the stillness that it does, and the explosion of laughter when people realize just _what_ he has thrown down. The proverbial gauntlet.

He has never, ever seen Xu embarrassed, and doesn't like the way it reads on her face now, mortification written in every line as she snatches up her underwear and stuffs it into her bag. Some deep distant part of him almost feels _bad_ about it, but then he remembers-

His sheets still smell like her, and she's the one who blew him off first.

His words are cool, indifferent– she's not the only one who can be heartless; she's just had a couple more years' practice at it.

"Whatever. Like you're worth it."

 **ii.**

She stands on the bridge of Garden, in command now that Squall is down there, in the fray, rescuing a princess and slaying the evil gray dragon. At least, that's his mission- she doubts he'll be able to succeed; it's hard, killing a friend.

Galbadia launches motorbikes– it's a nice touch. Dramatic, at least. If nothing else, they have always had a flair for that. And so has _he_ , even before he'd turned tail and run to the enemy. Enemy, hah.

She makes a little disgusted noise- she and her _comrades_ have been trained to fight the sorceress. Seifer may as well have thrown himself up on the pyre with the witch, for all the good his defection will do him.

Nida is piloting Garden with effortless skill, the lever pushed forward, back, just to the left. She stands behind him on the bridge, hands folded at her back, and a tendril of her ponytail has escaped in the past few moments.

Her earbud crackles to life. _Target sighted._

"Hold your fire," she instructs, and then he steps out, _he_ , with Hyperion at his side and his coat in tatters. What a mess he has become.

Hold your fire, hold your fire.

He steps forward, bellows something, commands troops with a wave of his arm. Where is the sorceress, where is the witch? They have _intel_ , brave, desperate SeeDs eager to end the war, Galbadian refugees caught fleeing.

They wear Balamb blue now, and Xu has sent them to die for their bravery, lost in the battlefield nightmare below.

(there is a grey bra on the cafeteria floor, and laughter echoing in her ears)

" _Ma'am, I have a clear shot."_

She steps forward, her fingers wrap around the barrier of the helm, Nida's eyes on her back, and there is only a second's pause to look at Almasy, before Xu gives the order.

"Fire."

 **iii.**

Afterward, when it is all over, the war ended, Time Compression more or less thwarted, and they have counted their dead (and memorialized them in a ceremony Xu hadn't even been able to _attend_ , laid up in a hospital bed groggy from surgery) she finds him in the brig.

Xu knows that she is the only visitor he's had in days. No one else is allowed down here, save three other people.

He looks like shit, a scraggly beard, eyes red from a lack of sleep. His clothes are generic sweats, and his T-shirt proclaims him property of Garden's athletics department. Xu would like to string him up and use him for target practice, if it didn't look like he'd already been put to that purpose.

She stops her wheelchair in front of his cell, locks the brakes, and studies him for a long moment.

"If you've come to gawk, I'm charging ten gil per look," he says, and his voice is hoarse, but almost the same, almost sarcastic, almost Seifer Almasy.

Almost dead.

"Hardly worth it," Xu counters. There's a familiarity in those words; years ago, ages ago.

He snorts, and he is _himself_ for a split second. "What happened to you?" Seifer asks, inclining his head toward her leg in its elaborate brace. "Did I do that? Should I apologize for _that_ , too?"

She reaches, brushes some lint off beige bandage. Pretends it doesn't hurt as badly as it does; she's been pushing herself, and she's left her painkillers in her dorm. They make her foggy, and there's too much work to be done.

"Part of a retaining wall fell on me after… whatever happened at the end." She doesn't want to say the words Time Compression, because they don't sound real. "So, probably not your fault."

The walls feel like they're closing in on her; It's too narrow in here, and if she had to live in that cell, she would've hung herself with a bedsheet a week ago. Seifer fills the whole thing, a gorilla in a too-small box.

It's difficult to breathe. Too dusty down here, or something.

"Good. Apology rescinded."

He is sixteen in that smile, even if it's in a war-torn face. Xu unlocks the brakes on her chair; she can't be here, can't be down here one more second, the walls closing in on her and the panic welling up in her chest.

"I didn't want it, anyway."

His voice follows her down the hall, her name escaping his lips– "Hey! Xu– _don't…_ "

But she can't stay. Can't hear what he has to say.

 **iv.**

She is thirty. He is twenty-eight, and his hair is falling into his eyes, his breath smells like whiskey, and she is decidedly drunk. (Isn't this how it all started, once upon a time?)

It's the only reason that this seems like a good idea. Xu doesn't make a _habit_ of hooking up with war criminals she meets in crappy bars in Deling City, but sometimes, she makes mistakes. She's not infallible, after all, not perfect. Not that she'll ever admit that out loud.

If nothing else, he's good in bed– better now than he was when he was sixteen, pinned beneath her hips with that cocksure grin on his face and her fingers wrapped around his wrists. She bangs his hands against the headboard, wants to see him bruised.

This is not forgiveness.

"Asshole."

"Bitch."

Xu runs her tongue along the line of his throat, kisses him snakebite fiercely, bites his lip, tastes the liquor on his tongue.

His fingers dig into her hips, leave bruises and the crescent marks of ragged nails. He draws blood somewhere near the small of her back, and it feels like sweat slithering down her skin.

This is not atonement.

They break the bed, cheap frame snapping like twigs when he gets her beneath him, mattress dropping six inches to the ground, the scream in her throat torn short by his mouth on hers, his palm pressing against her throat.

(this is meaningless)

And afterward, cigarette smoke curling toward the ceiling as they doze in a mass of blankets and tilted mattress, her head against his thigh, his fingers picking knots out of her hair, they don't say anything to each other at all.


End file.
